New unemployment rule: a minor change, but a petty change

It is a minor rule-change to be sure, but the hurdle the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development is proposing be placed before those seeking to claim unemployment benefits is pretty typical of the way the Christie administration has dealt with those in economic distress.

Jobless residents would have to search for openings online, on a state-run jobs board called Jobs4Jersey.com, every week. The only current requirement is that they check in with state officials by phone, mail, in person or online.

The state Department of Labor and Workforce Development said a weekly search of the jobs board is “the very least that a claimant can do” and the governor expects to save money for New Jersey taxpayers by putting more people back to work.

“If a claimant fails to simply register with Jobs4Jersey, then he or she is not actively seeking work and should not collect benefits,” Labor Department officials wrote in the New Jersey Register, detailing their proposal. “Each such effort benefits all taxpayers in that it helps to restore the solvency of the Unemployment Compensation Trust Fund.”

This would be a relatively minor change, though not one that will do the unemployed any favors. The governor says it will help taxpayers, who have been on the hook to the federal government for loans to cover trust fund shortfalls, but those shortfalls were not created by the unemployed. Rather, they are the result of legislative theft — governors and legislators of both parties, when unemployment was low, saw the trust fund as an easy mark, raiding the fund to balance budgets. The proposal seems petty and won’t address the larger issue.

But what makes it particularly irksome is that it is part of a pattern on the part of the Christie administration. Consider the kinds of policies the governor has pushed for those in economic distress:

• He cut in the Earned Income Tax Credit (from 25 percent of the national credit to 20 percent), with consent of the Democrats, was put forth as a way of balancing the budget. It was supposed to be temporary — doesn’t this make it a one-shot revenue? — but it has become, for all intents and purposes, a permanent cut because the governor has tied its restoration to a series of policies he knows the Democrats won’t support.
• He vetoed a minimum wage hike and offered a significantly weaker alternative that was never going to be seriously considered by the Democratic majority. The result? No increase and a Democrat-backed constitutional vote in November that, if the polls are to be believed, will be approved.
• He dissolved the Council on Affordable Housing, raided housing trust funds (both state and local), vetoed legislation that would have allowed towns to buy up abandoned foreclosed properties and use them as affordable housing.

And these are just the ones that come readily to mind. Taken with this as the larger context, one has to ask why the governor wants to pick on those of us who are claiming benefits from an unemployment system into which we have paid.

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Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet